Opening a window onto the beauty that lies beyond the brochures

Managing the Wood Supply, or how to build your cat a pine staircase.

One of the delights of living in the north of Tenerife is that, although we’re now into our fifth month of proper summer (glossing swiftly over September’s propensity to cloud over in the afternoons at the moment) and looking forward to another six weeks or so of it, we do still have seasons.

With November comes the rain, usually tremendous monsoon showers which swell the summer’s parched earth. Then the nights grow cooler signalling time to put the quilt back on the bed. By late December or early January we’re ready for the winter’s first fire, when the logs are brought in to sit by the wood burning stove, the kindling is laid and the ritual first flames fill the living room with their flickering glow.

Of course, having a wood burning stove means you have to have wood, and lots of it. Stoves are hungry and can eat their way through a wood pile in no time. Last winter was the longest and coolest we’ve experienced since moving here and left our wood supply seriously depleted. So when a couple of weeks ago our neighbour gave us 18 small pine logs, the remains of trees that had been pruned to death last year, it was very good news indeed.
The logs were gratefully received and ‘temporarily’ dumped onto the back terrace where they made a great deal of mess of sawdust, pine resin and dirt.

Our new rustic feature...

A couple of days later we offered to host a meeting of our friends and colleagues John (Sorted Sites), Julie (Tenerife Tattle) and Colin (Colin Kirby). The weather was extremely hot and the shady terrace was the perfect venue so something had to be done – fast.
Laying the logs diagonally in front of the kindling store at the bottom of the path was the ingenious solution. We created an instant rustic feature that hid the messy kindling pile and provided a rather elegant staircase for Whiskas to use at the same time. Purr-fect (ouch).